922 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XVI. No. 415. 



day. I do not wish, however, so much to 

 dwell upon the past and to lead my hearers 

 to rest in any way satisfied with the achieve- 

 ments of the last century, phenomenal as 

 they have been, as to direct attention to the 

 future and to place before you some of 

 those problems which at the opening of the 

 twentieth century we find awaiting investi- 

 gation, if not solution. 



I can only attempt to deal with a small 

 portion of the botanical field. These are 

 the days of specialization, and when any- 

 one is said to be a botanist, the question 

 which arises at once is. Which particular 

 section of botany is he associated with? 

 The same principle of subdivision which 

 cut up the old subject of natural history 

 into zoology, botany, and geology has now 

 gone further as knowledge has increased, 

 and three or perhaps four departments of 

 botany must be recognized, each demanding 

 as much study as the whole subject seemed 

 to only fifty years ago. I shall therefore 

 confine my remarks to-day to the field of 

 vegetable physiology. 



I should like at the outset to recommend 

 this section of botanical work to those of 

 the younger school of botanists who are 

 contemplating original research. To my 

 mind the possibilities of the living organism 

 as such present a fascination which is not 

 afforded by the dry bones of morphology 

 or histology ; valuable as researches into the 

 latter are, they seem to me to derive their 

 importance very largely from the past, 

 from the possibility of indicating or ascer- 

 taining the line of descent of living forms 

 and the relation of the latter to their re- 

 mote ancestors. The interest thus excited 

 seems to me to be rather of an academic 

 character when compared with the ac- 

 tual problems of present-day life, its strug- 

 gles, triumphs, and defeats in the conflict 

 for existence waged to-day by every living 

 organism. The importance of the study 

 of physiology as bearing upon the prob- 



lems of the morphologists has, I need hardly 

 say, been fully recognized by the workers 

 in that field. I may quote here a sentence 

 or two from the address of one of my dis- 

 tinguished predecessors, who said at Liver- 

 pool, "There is a close relation between 

 these two branches of biology, at any rate 

 to those who maintain the Darwinian posi- 

 tion, for from that point of view we see 

 that all the characters which the morphol- 

 ogist has to compare are, or have been, 

 adaptive. Hence it is impossible for the 

 morphologist to ignore the functions of 

 those organs of which he is studying the 

 homologies. To those who accept the origin 

 of species by variation and natural selec- 

 tion there are no such things as morpho- 

 logical characters pure and simple. There 

 are not two distinct categories of charac- 

 ters—a morphological and a physiological 

 category— for all characters alike are 

 physiological. ' ' 



But apart from the considerations of 

 the claims of vegetable physiology based 

 upon its own intrinsic scientific value and 

 the interest which its problems possess for 

 the worker himself, and iipon the place 

 accorded to it as its relationship to mor- 

 phology, it must, I think, be recognized as 

 being of fundamental economic importance, 

 especially in these times of agricultural de- 

 pression. For many years now it has been 

 recognized that agriculture is based upon 

 science ; that it involves indeed properly the 

 application of scientific principles to the 

 cultivation of the soil. But when we look 

 back i;pon what has passed for agriciiltural 

 science since the alliance between the two 

 has been admitted, we cannot but recognize 

 how lamentably deficient in breadth it has 

 been. The chemical composition of the soil 

 and subsoil has been investigated with some 

 thoroughness in many districts of the coun- 

 try. The effect of its various constituents 

 on the weight and quality of the crops culti- 

 vated in it has been exhaustively inquired 



